About the author

Biography

Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956, and began his professional career as a mime. He is the author of ten novels, two collections of stories, six books of poetry and a work of non-fiction, as well as a stage play performed almost entirely in Berkshire dialect, many radio plays and broadcasts, including several BBC documentaries, and numerous reviews and articles for major newspapers and journals. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), now a Vintage Classic, received the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was described by John Fowles in the Guardian as 'the most interesting novel I have read these last years… Suddenly English lives again!'

His work has received widespread critical acclaim, and is translated into many languages. In 2007 he was shortlisted for prizes in three respective genres: the Forward Poetry Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the South Bank Show Award for the year's best novel (Between Each Breath). Hodd (2009), a darker version of the Robin Hood legend in the form of a medieval document, was shortlisted for the inaugural Sir Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2010.

His latest novel, Flight (Cape, 2012), moves into Conradian territory with the story of a freight pilot abandoning a dubious arms deal and finding himself pursued by ruthless predators. Thorpe’s first foray into non-fiction, On Silbury Hill (Little Toller, 2014), was chosen as Radio 4’s Book of the Week and has gone into multiple printings.

Thorpe lives in France and currently teaches at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nîmes. His acclaimed translations of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Zola’s Thérèse Raquin were published by Vintage Classics in 2011 and 2014 respectively.

‘There is no contemporary I admire more than Adam Thorpe…’ Hilary Mantel (Vogue, August 2014)

‘My favourite... English novel is by Adam Thorpe called Ulverton... a brilliant, very, very good and very unBritish novel... It's magic, a magic book.’
Karl Ove Knausgaard

Works

Poetry

Mornings in the Baltic (Secker and Warburg, 1988)Meeting Montaigne (Secker and Warburg,1990)From the Neanderthal (Jonathan Cape,1999)Nine Lessons From the Dark (Cape, 2003)Birds with a Broken Wing (Cape, 2007)Voluntary (Cape, 2012)